The Girl Outside the Fireplace
by ayallaly
Summary: What happens to Rose and Mickey during those five and a half hours the Doctor had abandoned them to save Reinette? Characters: Ten, Rose, Mickey.
1. Five and a Half Hours

_[[So, I watched "The Girl in the Fireplace last night and I, like many other Doctor/Rose shippers am not a huge fan of the episode considering how selfishly the Doctor acts and how he disregards Rose completely. However, every time I do watch it, I'm left wondering how Rose spent those 5.5 hours waiting for him to come back, not sure if he even will, so I decided to write a fic about it. I think I'm going to add one more chapter to this of Rose and the Doctor talking about his abandonment of her if I'm feeling inspired. Let me know what you think!]]_

She'd been the one to urge him to and save her. She'd been the one who told him he had to do something.

He'd disappeared 'round the corner.

"Where are you going? They're gonna kill her!" she had plead.

"I know what to do," he'd shouted as he ran off. Seconds later, he rushed past them on Arthur the horse, heading straight towards the time window.

"But Doctor—" But he was gone before any more could be said. She watched the glass shatter into little shards, reflecting the image of her loss a hundred times. In her mind, she'd reached out after him, followed him through or tried to stop the window from closing somehow. Better to live a life stuck in 18th century France with him than be stuck here without him. But her body hadn't been so quick to react and she stood still as a statue as the picture slowly faded into the cold metal hull of the ship.

"What happened? How's he gonna get back?" Mickey was shouting from somewhere behind her but his voice sounded like it was underwater, or maybe it was her that was drowning. He had gone. He had left her here. No emergency protocol one. No instructions on how to rescue him. Just nothing.

* * *

"We can't fly the TARDIS without him? How's he gonna get back?" Mickey repeated, calmer this time. She must have been standing there staring at the broken glass for several minutes now, ignoring his queries because she didn't want to face the answers. She glanced up at the stars, knowing that one of those out there was home and she might not ever see it again now. Then there would be Raxacoricofallapatorus about six thousand light years to the left. She remembered how he'd picked her up in a hug the first time she'd been able to say its name without stuttering. And three hundred and twenty-six light years down from there was the planet with the great waves of ice…she couldn't think of the name of it now. They'd only been to handful of all the planets out there but the Doctor had been clever beyond imagination on them all and gotten them out of the most impossible situations. Surely, he'd do the same now. Surely, twenty minutes from now, he'd show up as though he'd never left. Surely.

* * *

The first hour was the shortest because she'd spent it all with the utmost faith that this was not her fate. Her doubt in the Doctor had been miniscule and her assurances directed at Mickey were genuine.

"He'll think of something. He's the Doctor."

And that had shut him up for about half an hour. He'd sat on the floor with his legs crossed and tried his hardest to just be patient. He'd whistled for a bit and though he was a bit tone deaf and was unrecognizable as a melody, she'd humoured him and let him carry on to keep him in good spirits. Eventually, he got antsy again.

"I dunno, Rose. It's been a while now."

"It's fine Mickey; we just have to wait."

She hadn't left her stance there in front of the shattered glass since it'd been whole. She realized maybe if she relaxed a bit, so would he. She squatted down beside him and leant back on her hands while she let out a sigh.

"We just have to wait…"

* * *

By the second hour, they'd gone into the TARDIS, unable to stare at the empty space where Versailles had once been any longer. Mickey had gone to Rose's room to lie down as the TARDIS, sharing a mindset with the Doctor, had not wanted Mickey's stay to seem permanent and neglected to create him a room of his own. Rose sat in the captain's seat in the cockpit staring up at the big blue waves in its core and finding their constant undulation soothing. She fumbled with the key that had let them in between her fingers, thinking of the promise he'd made her long ago by giving it to her that he'd never just disappear. She clasped the chain in her palm and pressed the cool silver face to her cheek.

Why hadn't he taught her to fly the TARDIS? He'd told her to push a button or pull a lever or spin a ball before. She'd follow his command with a coy smile and a "Like this?" and he'd nod proudly with a "Perfect" and then come around behind her and reach for something above her head so his chest would press in close on her shoulders and sometimes she swore he was just doing it for an excuse to touch her innocently. But none of that had ever compared to any sort of lesson and she'd be kidding herself if she thought she could successfully navigate the cosmos now.

"Couldn't he have set a course for you with his sonic screwdriver again, like last time? Just one second out of his time before galloping off. Or you could take us to pick him up. Surely we're out of events enough now that we could go pick him up. Even if he had to spend a few years there first. Not that he'd mind."

She set the key down on the seat beside her. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, talking to a spaceship. It was alive and she could feel its presence. She could imagine how the Doctor could travel with it and not feel utterly alone but she could also understand why he kept friends around who actually answered his questions as she screamed at its silent parts.

"Come on! You helped me save him before. Why won't you do it now? Sure, I had to pull your arm and leg to do it last time and I don't remember most of the details of what exactly we did, but I know we did it together and he's alive and breathing out there because of us!"

She had stood up and placed her hands on the railings as though she could shake sense into the TARDIS.

"Won't you miss him? He's stuck out there without us." Her passionate shrieks had gradually declined into dejected appeals. "Won't you miss him?"

She was tempted to break into the TARDIS's heart again because if she couldn't get to him, the Bad Wolf certainly could, but her faith in the Doctor hadn't completely diminished yet and she couldn't bear to imagine him losing that fluffy hair and toothy grin just to save her again.

* * *

The third hour was spent lying on the waffled floor of the cockpit, spread-eagle, dozing in and out of sleep. Mickey was still napping and she imagined if she could just manage to do the same, the time would pass quicker and she'd wake up to his face hovering above hers making some comment about how lazy humans are.

* * *

She was awoken in the fourth hour by Mickey's footsteps echoing in the corridors. He was glaring at his watch and mumbling something about how the Doctor had been gone for too long. She sat up and his voice became a little clearer.

"Four and a half hours, Rose. He's been gone four and a half hours. I think it's time we start considering that he's not coming back for us. That we're stuck here."

"Living in the TARDIS won't be so bad. It's got a swimming pool, you know."

"I'm not joking around, Rose. We're never going home. We're never gonna see Jackie again. We're never gonna see the next Prime Minister election. We're never gonna see grass again or watch a sunset. We're never gonna have real lives."

"Shut up, Mickey! Just shut up!" Her outburst had pushed him into the set next to the abandoned key and she now hovered over him.

"He didn't just leave us here. He wouldn't do that. If he wasn't coming back, he'd have sent us home or something. Don't you remember? He sent me back to you and mum last time. But he didn't. We're here and if we're here, we're meant to wait for him."

"Oh, right, I forgot. The great Doctor can do no wrong in Rose Tyler's eyes. Stranded us here in a broken down ship in the 51st century to chase a pretty French girl and you're still drinking his Kool-Aid. Accept it, Rose. He's no different than the rest of us."

"Don't you say that. It's not like that. I told you, he wouldn't leave us. He wouldn't leave me. He and I—We're—" But there was no word for it and her sentence fell short. She was in Mickey's face now and he could feel the heat of her breath on his cheek. Another tear made its way down her cheek, following the streak marks of its predecessor. She knew if she kept her proximity, Mickey would do something stupid like try to kiss her so she spun around swiftly and circumambulated the control panel.

"That's just fine then," Mickey retorted with a sarcastic nod as he stood up and turned to leave. "I don't even know why you let me come along. Obviously you don't want me 'round."

She took a step towards him, "Mickey…" Her tone was entreating him but all she could manage to say was his name.

"No, I get it. How could I compare?"

She closed the rest of the space between them. "I'm sorry, Mickey. You know I care about you." She implored him with her eyes as much as with her tone. She placed a peck upon his cheek and she watched his defenses crumble.

"I know. I'm just sick of waiting."

"He'll come back soon. I know he will."

"If you believe in him, I believe in him."

* * *

The fifth hour the left the TARDIS and sat outside the broken window again, afraid that if the Doctor came through somehow and didn't see them there that'd he'd think something had happened to them. Mickey had taken to preoccupying himself playing with loose wires, thinking he could hotwire them like a car, and clicking buttons on the computer because he'd always been fairly good with those. Rose took a spot on the TARDIS threshold, liking to straddle dimensions.

She watched Mickey fiddle with technology way beyond his comprehension. Finally, she thought she understood him. Understood his place in all this. Here he was, pursuing her despite the obvious evidence of her affections towards the Doctor. But she always pulled him back in. She could have let him storm off in there, just a while ago. She could have let him finally accept that she wasn't in love with him anymore, if she ever truly had been. But she hadn't. She thrown out her lasso and roped him back in with the false hope that maybe there was still a little spark left in her that sputtered for him.

Now she was another cog in the machine. She'd thought yesterday when the Doctor had told her that he wasn't planning on just dropping her off and leaving her…she thought he'd meant it. She thought they had something special. She thought _she'd_ been special. She swore he'd almost said it—almost admitted it. But she must have imagined it. Mickey was right. All it had taken was a pretty French girl who'd obviously been more impressive in the several hours he knew her than Rose had been in the whole year they'd been travelling together. Despite his unwillingness to admit any real feelings towards her and despite the obvious attraction he had towards Reinette, she'd believed that the Doctor still cared for her, just as Mickey did. Here she was, waiting for him like a lost puppy when he'd obviously chosen a life with Reinette instead.

Then they heard a familiar sound. The sonic screwdriver, coming from the other room. The fireplace. Voices. The Doctor.

"Pick a star, any star." She could see him crouched down looking through the flames at _her_. She stood up and walked a few steps to greet him. He was sprinting towards them. That was a good sign, wasn't it? Obviously he'd wanted to come back to her them if he was running. He enveloped her in one of their bear hugs, one so tight that sometimes she forgot where her body started and his ended.

"How long did you wait?"

"Five and a half hours." She couldn't hide the waver in her voice.

"Great! Always wait five and a half hours."

"Where have you been?" She asked, grazing his arm, hoping he would give an answer that would grant her relief at his absence.

"Into the TARDIS. Be with you in a sec."

Mickey followed his instructions and jumped back into the blue box but Rose stood there and watched him run back off again, shouting her name. He'd told her to always wait. That must have meant he always intended on coming back, mustn't it? Of course, what other options did she have? And their reunion hadn't lasted more than thirty seconds before he was off pursuing _her_ again. But still, he had come back. Surely she could live a life of being second best as long as he was in it.

* * *

As he sauntered in, dragging his heels on the floor with no French courtesan on his arm, she knew it was out of circumstance rather than choice.

"You all right?" It didn't matter that he didn't choose her. He was hurting and she loved him and she would be there for him if he asked. As soon as she said the words, she knew he wouldn't, but she wouldn't be herself if she didn't at least inquire.

"I'm always all right."

That's when she knew. Though she'd suffered a bit of amnesia after the fact, the images that were in her head when she was the Bad Wolf came back to her in her dreams. Or nightmares, depending on the night. Some evenings, she was taken away to beautiful worlds with lavender skies and trees as tall as skyscrapers. Others, she was shown the most horrific creatures committing horrific acts. And one night, she'd seen it—the Time War. She saw what he'd done, she saw what his people had done, she saw what the Daleks had done. She'd never told him, certain he'd feel endless guilt at her having to live those memories vicariously. But she'd understood everything he'd done since she met him and she'd understood how having her around had made him better. Maybe that was why she believed she was special to him. And maybe she was, but not in the way Reinette had been today. If he lived with all those thoughts going on in his head at once all the time and that's what he considered being "all right", she could only imagine what he was feeling now. He had loved her and he had picked her and was only coming back to them begrudgingly.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to hug him or yell at him but she did neither as Mickey began tugging at her arm. "It's time you showed me 'round the rest of this place."


	2. Why Her?

**[[I suppose I ought to explain myself a bit here. By no means do I think that the Doctor loved Reinette in the way that he loves Rose. I think he was exploring the arrogant and selfish side of his new regeneration in this episode and he admired Rienette's place in history and fed more off her affection for him than he actually reciprocated it, and I think he went after her in that way because he likes to play hero. However, I also think the Doctor is a beautifully self-righteous man and would not be able to come to terms right away with the fact that he had left the love of his life for a lesser love and truly does convince himself that he loved Rienette for the time being. I do hope I show that his love for Rose is something different and deeper. Also, this is not so much of Rose demanding an explanation as it is her needing to reassert herself in their dynamic as someone who doesn't just accept being put on the sidelines. Enjoy (: ]]**

"Why her?"

Mickey had fallen asleep on a the top bunk of what appeared to be some sort of crew's quarters the TARDIS seemed to have begrudgingly conjured up. Rose had laid on her bed, curled up on her side and her face buried in her pillow but the scent of Mickey's shampoo lingered on it. She'd flipped it back and forth, thrown it on the floor, even turned it inside out, before getting up to find the Doctor. He was in the library, which was filled from floor to ceiling with thousands of books, despite the fact that he had most of the knowledge stamped on the pages swimming around his head already. He was sitting the wrong way in an armchair staring at a page in a hardback that looked older than she was. She winced as she read the spine and saw _her_ name scrawled in calligraphic letters.

She could do it. She'd been preparing herself the whole walk down the corridor. After all they'd been through, he didn't get to just abandon her like that without any sort of explanation. It wasn't as though she'd never stood up to him before. She'd stood between him pointing an abnormally large gun and a Dalek once. It was common, actually. He needed someone to hold him back sometimes and she had no problem doing so. But this was different. This wasn't just him being ambiguous with his moral compass. This had been him making a conscious choice to leave her for Reinette. However, after all they'd been through, she wasn't about to take it lying down.

"Sorry?" He pushed his glasses up his nose and she thought she saw the gleam in his eyes that only ever occurred when he looked at her.

This certainly wasn't the first time the Doctor had seen Rose Tyler in her jim-jams but suddenly she wished she was still wearing proper clothes. She felt vulnerable in the oversized linens, afraid he wouldn't take her seriously.

"Why her?" she repeated, with a bit more conviction this time.

"Ohh, I told you. We'll never know. Those circuits were so twisted and damaged by the time we got there, it could have been anything, really." He snapped the book shut and circled around in the chair so his legs hung off the end like they ought to. She might have lost her aggression if he hadn't insisted on acting so normal—well normal for him—like he'd never galloped off without a goodbye.

"I'm not talking about the clockwork robots." Her foot twisted uncertainly and her fingers wrapped around the edge of her cotton sleeves but she maintained her gaze.

"No." He pulled the glasses from his fallen face and held them in his hand. "No, of course not." He'd been dreading this moment since he'd stepped foot into the TARDIS. Mickey the Idiot would accept his return and wander off without a second thought, but Rose Tyler—strong willed, no nonsense Rose Tyler would certainly need some answers.

"You didn't have a plan for coming back, did you?"

"Weeeellll, you know me. I never have a plan. I just think it all up as we go along." He tried to remain lighthearted in hopes he could steer the conversation off the track Rose had laid for it.

"Obviously there was no other option, right? I mean, you had to sever the connection with the ship in order to save her and stop the wind-up repairmen and there wasn't any other way to do it." Her words were interspersed with tight-lipped smiles and short nods. Her tone was blatantly bitter and she took no measures to hide it.

"They were going to kill her, Rose." He said it in that baritone timbre that made everything leaving his lips sound like incontrovertible truths almost too righteous for human ears.

She couldn't stand that tone he took and if she'd been a lesser person, would have taken to a tantrum and filled the library with her hysterics. She could have insisted that he should have taken ten seconds to send her and Mickey home. She could have protested that her Dumbo-eared Doctor would never have deserted her like that. She could have retracted her earlier statements that he ought to save Reinette at any cost, claiming she hadn't meant it if the price was leaving her. The Rose Tyler he had met ages ago in the basement of Henrik's may have started howling without a second thought, taking after her mother in that way. But the Rose Tyler who had seen the end of the world, who had killed the Dalek Emperor, who had nursed this spikey haired alien back to health, had grown so much since then and refused to react like the child she might resemble, standing her in pajamas and addressing a god.

"I know. But…you just left us, Doctor. No instructions, no plan. What was I supposed to think? Yesterday, you were saying you'd never leave me and then, today…" He had gone off chasing tail when something better came along. Could she really blame him? Reinette was all but a Princess and she was a shop girl from London.

"I just, I think I deserve to be kept in the loop of things. You can't keep it all in that great big head of yours. Don't you dare ever just disappear like that again."

He could tell she was holding something more in. He could recognize it in her eyes because he'd seen it in the mirror so many times before. Self-doubt and loathing. By no means would he ever allow Rose Tyler to believe she was ever worth less than all the Universe's stars. He placed his glasses on his head before pulling himself out of his chair to meet her. His hands tucked in his trouser pockets, he strode across the room. There were so many things he ought to say to wipe that gleam from her eyes but none of them made their way to his lips. Despite his loquacious manner, he had difficulty expressing the things that really mattered.

"I'm so sorry. I promise you, Rose Tyler, I never will again." He pulled her into a tight embrace. With her here wrapped in his arms, the scent of her hair filling his nose, her chin fitting into the crook of his neck, their hearts beating in a musical trio, he couldn't imagine how he'd ever thought he could be parted from her. It was Reinette's presence that had made the separation bearable. Poor Reinette who had looked into his cavernous soul and fallen right in. Who had spent her last years waiting around for him, picking out the stars she wanted to visit and saying prayers to her fireplace.

He hadn't planned on any of it. That part, at least, was truthful. He'd been rather caught up in it all. If this regeneration had been especially selfish, it had been because he'd grown from her—the girl who nearly ended the universe to save her dad from a car accident. He couldn't blame her for acting out of love, besides all it had taken was an apology from her sweet lips and a graze of her cheek for him to forgive her for bringing upon the apocalypse because at least if he was finally doing to die, it'd have been after he was made a better man for meeting Rose Tyler.

But Rose was human and despite the fact that he kept his friends around for that exact human-ness, he sometimes neglected to remember it. He wanted to say it was only fair for him to have two affairs, considering the baggage she had left sleeping in the barracks, but he knew that despite his jealous teasing of the boy, he was no real competition for Rose's affections. Having not harboured romantic feelings for anyone in hundreds of years, finding them for two women at once had caught him by surprise. He had two hearts, couldn't they each have one? But no, that wasn't how it worked. Love was not logical. Did he dare use that word, even in the confines of his own mind? Besides, he only had one body to house both beating cages in and he had chosen to give it to Reinette in the heat of the moment.

If the two had been switched, if Rose had been stalling for her life and Reinette standing there helpless, egging him on to take action…if Rose had been in life-threatening peril, he would have followed the same course and jumped right through that window to her rescue. It was just circumstance that had placed them differently. Certainly, he would be the first to admit that he had been self-serving in recent events, but it was consequence of his taking advantage of his time with Rose. He viewed his time with Reinette as fleeting because her life was outside of him while Rose's was intertwined with his. But he had no way of explaining all of this to her.

He'd hesitated for her sake. He'd tried to explain that if he went that he couldn't come back. But she'd urged him on, like she always did. Perhaps she had been testing him to see if he would really go. But he knew that wasn't like his Rose. She'd sincerely just wanted him to do the right thing. He was the Doctor. He made the hard decisions that other people wouldn't. At least that's what he told himself as he sipped on wine with Reinette and looked up at the stars, knowing that Rose was up there, thousands of years into the future.

He'd made a mistake in not sending her and Mickey home. All he'd had to do was push them inside the TARDIS and activate an Emergency Program and drop them right back off at Earth. Right back into Jackie's eagerly awaiting arms. Right back into the slow life, to forget about him. But now he wondered if it had been a conscious one. Sending them home meant he had given up. That he'd resigned himself to never see Rose's beaming face again. That after he'd enjoyed a handful of years with Reinette he wouldn't hop around Europe looking for a ride back to that broken down spaceship in the 51st century. That he wouldn't do just about anything, including attempting to cleverly hop timelines to try and find a way back to her. And despite breaking his promise of never leaving her, he refused to break the one of ever giving up on her.

He wondered what was going on in her head as he held her in silence. She declined to press the matter further, obviously taking some small bit of solace in his words, or at the very least, in his touch. Her question, however, still nagged at him as he'd neglected to answer it. _Why her?_

"She peered into my mind and saw me. Saw everything I did in the War and out of it and loved me still." He spoke the words into her hair, half of him hoping she wouldn't decipher them and wondering if he shouldn't have said anything after all.

A moment of silence passed as Rose picked her words carefully. It was an unspoken understanding that she and the Doctor never vocalized their feelings directly or by name, but certainly he must have realized by now. She pulled away from his embrace so their eyes could meet.

"I dream of the Bad Wolf. All that time vortex energy might not be inside me any more but it left imprints. Memories of things I've never done. Images of places I've never seen. Even if you'd never come back, I'd still travel time and space from the comfort of my bed. I've seen Stonehenge being built and the dust it turns to in a hundred million years. I've seen the ice on Pluto, the orange skies of Gallifrey….and Skaro…"

As that dreadful name rolled off her innocent lips, he knew that she and Reinette were the same, and Rose had kept it all to herself, not wanting to awaken any of the guilt she already watched him carry in his gait. If she had seen Skaro, she had seen Davros, she had seen the Time War, and she had seen how it all ended. Perhaps that was why she'd stopped asking about his past, about his people. She had pieced it all together slowly over the months and was figuring out how to help repair him, without ever knowing it was merely her presence that had begun that process. Rose Tyler knew him, she saw him, and she loved him still.

She watched it all dancing on his angular features and slipped her hand into his. Though her heart leapt at his recognition, her implicit confession would not have wiped clean the loss of Reinette. He had left her in his moment of crisis, but she would be stronger and stick around through hers. "Come on," she tugged his arm and began leading him back towards the armchair and the beautifully bound book on its seat. "You know, I'm not all that well versed in her history, except for what we saw in the time windows. I wasn't much of a student back then. I'm much more of a visual learner. But something tells me you'll be a much better teacher than old Mr. Hampton. I swear, a Dalek had more emotion in its voice."

He picked the book up from the chair and brought it over to a couch on the other side of the room. The two sat facing one another with their backs against the arms and their legs entangled. The Doctor placed his glasses back on his nose and opened the delicate spine to a random page. "All right, then. I hope you've got something to take notes with. I do intend on giving an exam." Rose chuckled in response and he was caught in her gaze. It saddened him for a moment that she would never fathom just how similar she and Reinette truly were. No, "love" wasn't the right word at all. She was more like a necessity—something the universe had created to compliment him perfectly in order to make him whole. "Love" didn't even begin to cover it. He made a mental note that once they'd dumped Mickey back off at home, he'd take her to someplace truly spectacular that might be able to hold a small flame to her blazing beauty.

He read her facts about the only other woman who might ever hold reign over his heart as she oohed and ahhed accordingly until she drifted off into sleep. He carried her limp body to her bedroom and tucked her in with a soft kiss on her forehead. "Rose Tyler," he murmured to himself because he would never get used to the delightful way her name rolled off his tongue, as though his lips were melded specifically to speak it. Reinette's letter felt heavy in his pocket as he quietly shut Rose's door behind him. He made his way to the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot's chairs. The Doctor ran his fingers over the calligraphic letters on the parchment as he read the words over and over and wondered if someday he would be reading Rose's farewell letter.


End file.
